Nada Surf. Or rather, Nada Raft.

We took the mutts rafting for the first time last week! Actually, I'd like to remove the exclamation point from the previous sentence. It was not the ideal, happy ride down the river, that I had envisioned these past months. In fact, I'd actually go as far as to classify the experience as horrible and/or disasterous.

The morning started out well enough, with breakfast burritos, and happy, smiling Kona faces. The dogs were good on the ride up, and super excited once we got to the river. I rigged the spyder that I was going to row the dogs down in while Keith rigged his kayak and then I loaded up the dogs. They didn't exactly jump in to the raft, ready and rearing to go, but I tossed them in, and they didn't immediately jump out, which was a pretty big accomplishment in my mind! However, things quickly went downhill. They were scared, and wouldn't get out of my lap. Minus the sharp claws and the scratches that they left on my thighs, the fact that they were in my lap wouldn't have been a problem, except for the other fact that I had to row in order to get the boat down the river. After tossing them into the front and the back of the boat dozens of times, only to have them return 2 seconds later, Hyside decided that he was done with rafting and peaced out. He jumped out in flat water and motored toward Boyscout beach. I, very, very frustrated by this point, rowed to shore while K, paddled upstream, back to me and the dogs.

At that point, kayaking was over. There was no way, in this life or any other, that I was going to be able to get down the river in one piece (minus the flesh under the dogs' nails) by myself. So, we strapped the kayak to the back of the raft, and Keith took the oars. I sat in the front of the raft, a dog on each side, holding the handles on each of their life jackets and desperately trying to keep them in the raft. Not fun. The Koners freaked out each and every time that she saw any whitewater or heard the noise associated with whitewater, and Hyside tried to jump out numerous time before he finally found his safe haven in the kayak.

By the last third of the trip, things finally calmed down a bit as far as whitewater, and so did the dogs. They wandered around the boat a bit on their own and I no longer had to hold them both in the raft. They survived the first time, and so did I, so that's good. Hopefully next time will go better, and the time after that will be even better! It can't get worse, so that's good! I think taking only 1 dog at a time will be the plan until further notice. Yep.

Here are some photos of the dogs running a class III. Kona took a pretty good shot! If you look closely, Hyside is in the kayak in the back of the boat. You can at least see his ears in some photos. He has on a red life jacket too, if that helps.